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Watching the Eurovision Song Contest last night, I could not help notice that while each country had a different representative delivering its votes, somehow the female representatives showed similar characteristics. I am a firm believer in the law of large numbers and thus think a large sample size can sometimes reveal significant issues. As an artist I use mosaics from time to time to express various opinions, and so after composing this new work I think we can agree Europe still thinks women are nothing more than eye candy:

For higher resolution, press F11 and then click the image

Following is a legend with the name of each country corresponding to each photo’s location:

^* Out of a total of 43 representatives, 14 males were excluded.
^† Insignificant minor retouching was done on some of the photos.
^‡ The Turkish representative’s shirt was heavily retouched to remove some superimposed graphics

Every Jewish person that becomes successful abroad is treated here as an Honorary Israeli: Natalie (Hershlag) Portman, Gene (Chaim Witz) Simmons, the girl in the Yes We Can video – basically if you have experienced worldwide success, no matter how vague your connection to the Holy Land, or how long it has been since you last visited – Israelis will find a way to not only prove you were always one of us, but that your success is directly linked to your being one of us.

I tell you… those Israelis will grasp at anything…

Singer-songwriter and Honorary Israeli Regina Spektor      was one of the artists chosen to sing for the new Narnia film released last week. Have a listen and see if you like the song as much as I and Perez did:

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Buy the entire album in MP3 format or in CD format.

Regina Spektor – The Call – Lyrics

It started out as a feeling
Which then grew into a hope
Which then turned into a quiet thought
Which then turned into a quiet word
And then that word grew louder and louder
’till it was a battle cry

I’ll come back..
When you call me
No need to say good bye

Just because everything’s changing
Doesn’t mean it’s never been this way before
All you can do is try to know who your friends are
As you head off to the war

Pick a star on the dark horizon
And follow the light
You’ll come back when its over
No need to say good bye
You’ll come back when it’s over
No need to say good bye.

Now we’re back to the beginning
It’s just a feeling and no one knows yet
But just because they can’t feel it too
Doesn’t mean that you have to forget

Let your memories grow stonger and stonger
’til they’re before your eyes

You’ll come back
When they call you
No need to say good bye
You’ll come back
When they call you
No need to say good bye

I was ruffling through a mobile phones catalogue I got in the mail, appreciating all the glistening new models and thinking my own device is on his proverbial deathbed, when I recognized a Tami4 water dispenser within dozens of harmless looking cellphones. You see, Tami4 is a popular Israeli brand that can filter your drinking water, chill it and even heat it, but it has only one flaw: it has absolutely zero phone transmitting capabilities. Upon closer examination, I found out the water dispenser I was looking at was actually a Samsung Z240 cell phone, but it sure looks like the two are related, even if one is in better shape than the other:

	Left: Tami4 – a popular Israeli water dispenser.		Right: Samsung Z240 – a popular Korean cellphone.

A month ago I was contacted by Maariv, Israel’s second leading daily newspaper, in regards to a post I wrote the previous month. Feel free to pause here and refresh your memory by reading that post again. Basically, I was complaining about the paper’s international gossip guy who was reading material on PerezHilton.com, translating it to Hebrew, and passing it as his own without giving proper credit. As an avid Perez reader, the matter bothered me enough to conduct a four day inquiry which proved two thirds of all the items can be traced to the online gossip site.

The Maariv employee who contacted me wished to converse without attribution. Apparently he read my post and wanted to discuss the issues I raised. We carried a fifteen minutes long phone conversation about journalism, ethics and blogging, which was surprisingly pleasant and intelligent. I conveyed my notion of ‘giving credit where credit is due’, he talked about legal issues and made a distinction between exclusive and non-exclusive items. Overall I felt there was room for dialogue, and so I suggested ending each item with an acronym that will indicate the source, e.g. [ph] for a Perez Hilton item, [td] for a Tyler Durden item and so forth. I also suggested he put his arguments into writing so that I would publish them on his behalf at the end of the original post, but he politely declined.

We ended the conversation with my insinuating I’ll keep an open eye for any changes, and this is exactly what I did:
Little by little evidence piled to suggest people at Maariv took my critique seriously and the amount of credited blurbs was on the increase. The phrasing started to change from “Julia Roberts was seen…” to “Blogger Perez Hilton reports that Julia Roberts…”, and non-exclusive items sported phrases such as “American tabloids report” et cetera.

All and all, and to my genuine surprise, it seemed my little insignificant rant about credit giving had made a difference on Carlebach street, and while not to the extend that I suggested, someone did instruct the gossip guy to dispense credits more freely and to change the general tone of the segment.

Following are some visual aids from the previous weeks. The green boxes indicate the items that directly credited Perez Hilton, but to truly appreciate the change of tone you must be able to read Hebrew:

Two-Nil.

Thanks!
xoxo
P